Cigarette having composite wrapper construction

ABSTRACT

Cigarette with a composite wrapper consisting of two superposed thin sheets of paper fabricated of vegetable fiber stocks. The outer sheet is a porous conventional cigarette paper of good combustibility and ashing qualities. The inner sheet which is in contact with the tobacco is fabricated of uncoated, unsized and unimpregnated vegetable fiber stock and is essentially so poreless as to be practically impervious to the passage of air therethrough. The inner wrapper sheet burns at a rate slower than the tobacco underneath and the outer sheet in such wise that substantially all the air which is drawn through the cigarette during combustion is constrained, like in cigars and pipes, to pass axially through the burning coal, and thus to be less oxidizing than in conventional cigarettes. The produced smoke gives the feeling of being richer than that from conventional cigarettes made with the same tobacco, and tends to reduce inhalation.

United States Patent Wilhelm Kahane Franconia Hotel 20 West 72nd Street,New York, N.Y. 10023;

Magdalena Efros; Norbert Efros, both of 597 Beech Street, Haworth, NJ.07641 15,270

Feb. 27, 1970 Jan. 1 1, 1972 Continuation-impart of application Ser. No.471,662, July 13, 1965, now abandoned. This application Feb. 27, 1970,Ser. No.

[72] Inventors 21 Appl. No. 22] Filed [45] Patented PrimaryExaminer-Melvin D. Rein ABSTRACT: Cigarette with a composite wrapperconsisting of two superposed thin sheets of paper fabricated ofvegetable fiber stocks. The outer sheet is a porous conventionalcigarette paper of good combustibility and ashing qualities. The innersheet which is in contact with the tobacco is fabricated of uncoated,unsized and unimpregnated vegetable fiber stock and is essentially soporeless as to be practically impervious to the passage of airtherethrough. The inner wrapper sheet burns at a rate slower than thetobacco underneath and the outer sheet in such wise that substantiallyall the air which is drawn through the cigarette during combustion isconstrained, like in cigars and pipes, to pass axially through theburning coal, and thus to be less oxidizing than in conventionalcigarettes. The produced smoke gives the feeling of being richer thanthat from conventional cigarettes made with the same tobacco, and tendsto reduce inhalation.

CIGARETTE HAVING COMPOSITE WRAPPER CONSTRUCTION RELATED APPLICATIONDESCRIPTION OF PRIOR ART According to the statistics contained in the1964 Report to Surgeon General on Smoking and Health, the death rate ofcigarette smokers is much higher than that of nonsmokers, while that ofcigar or pipe smokers is about the same as for nonsmokers. In the past,notwithstanding that no carcinogen was found in cigarette smoke, whichis not in cigar and pipe smoke as well, it was thought that the greaterharm caused by cigarette smoking is due to unidentified chemicalconstituents of either the cigarettes paper or ofits (acid) tobacco. Theincrimination of the paper brought about proposals for replacement ofcigarette paper by substitutes such as metallic foils, fiber-freeregenerated cellulose films, plastic cellulose-free films, etc. Thesehad the drawback that the resulted cigarette ash has disagreeableappearance and no strength. The incrimination of the cigarettes (acid)tobaccos have also led to the development of cigarettes made with cigaror pipe tobaccos, whose alkalinity was found unacceptable to the tasteof most cigarette smokers.

At present, the same of the means used in trying to lower the highmortality of cigarette smokers is the improvement of the smoke throughfilter tips, poor tobaccos, and the use of very porous cigarette paper.

In our view, the default of the ways followed before us is that littleattention was paid by developers of new cigarettes to the factorinhalation of the smoke" which, because of the enormous difference inthe percentage of inhalers and degree of inhalation between cigarettesmokers and the cigar or pipe smokers, is the most strikingcharacteristic of cigarette smoking. Based on experimental data found inthe scientific literature, we concluded that switching from regular toimpoverished smoke cigarettes incites most cigarette smokers tounconsciously inhale the smoke longer or deeper to compensate for itsimpoverishment in nicotine, so as to finally take into their body aboutthe same amount of nicotine (and tars) as from regular cigarettes. Thefact that the difference is absorbed through a very delicate organ, thelung, instead through the oral cavity, is necessarily detrimental. Wehave found a parallelism between the rise of the filter cigarette andthe increase in the frequency of coronary heart disease, lung cancer,bronchitis and emphysema, known to be linked with the inhalation ofcigarette smoke. As according to the data of the 1964 Report to SurgeonGeneral, these diseases claimed 79.2 percent of the excess deaths ofcigarette smokers. We hold that filter cigarettes are worse for healththan regular cigarettes. thought the copending parent application, Ser.No. 471,662 of July 13, 1965, we presented the new idea that the ills ofcigarette smoking stem from a physical property of the conventionalcigarette paper, its porosity, and have incriminated it for thecigarette s incitation to inhaling. We disclosed in said application ourexperimental discovery that imperviousness to air in the wrapper ofcigarettes induces them to behave like cigars and pipes in that theirsmoke is felt as being richer and that it no longer incites inhaling.Prior to said discovery, imperviousness to air in wrappers has occurredonly as an involuntary consequence of structures proposed for specialgoals other than the achievement of imperviousness to the passage ofair; and therefore those cigarettes present drawbacks, such as poor ashor objectionable compounds in their smoke, derived from the presence inthe wrapper of materials demanded for the achievement of those specialgoals. Because ignoring said discovery, at the time we made thisinvention,

nobody could have through to modify an impervious to air wrapper of theprior art in order to free it of its specific drawback while stillretaining that valuable property, the imperviousness to the passage ofair.

In said parent application, among other solutions, we proposed acigarette whose practically impervious to air wrapper is made of twosheets of paper, one of them being practically impervious to the passageof air. In this continuation-in-part we present new subject matterregarding that cigarette.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF INVENTION This invention covers a cigarette with apractically impervious to air double sheeted paper wrapper, saidimperviousness being due to the presence, in that wrapper, of apractically impervious to air sheet of an uncoated, unsized and unim-"DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The cigarette, that makes theobject of this continuation-inpart application, comprises a charge oftobacco and a substantially cylindrical composite wrapper therearound,the said wrapper being practically impervious to the passage of air andbeing composed of two superposed thin sheets of paper fabricated ofvegetable fiber stocks. The outer sheet of said composite wrapper is aconventional cigarette paper, is porous and of good eombustibility andashing qualities. The inner sheet, that which is in contact with thetobacco, is fabricated of uncoated, unsized and unimpregnated vegetablefiber stock, and is essentially so poreless as to be practicallyimpervious to the passage of air therethrough. Because of saidimperviousness and the resulting lack of circulation of air through it,the inner wrapper sheet burns at a rate slower than the tobaccounderneath (which being a porous thin material, is pervious to thepassage of air) and than the porous outer sheet.

The resulted retardation in the burning of the inner sheet maintains,during the puff, a shield of unburnt wrapper around the short peripheralring of the just ignited tobacco that contacts the base of the glowingcoal cone. Because of that shield, substantially all the air which isdrawn through our cigarette during the puffing period ofits combustionis constrained, like in cigars and pipes, to pass axially through theburning coal, where it loses much of its free oxygen. Therefore, when itreaches said peripheral ring of just ignited tobacco and afterwards thedistillation zone, that air and the products of combustion are lessoxidizing than in the corresponding zones of the conventional cigaretteswhere, in absence of said shield during the puffing period, thecombustion of that ring employs mostly oxygen-rich fresh air enteringradially directly from the atmosphere. It is known that the largest partof the mainstream smoke is derived from the burning of the peripheralzones of the tobacco charge and that the temperature there is higherthan inside. The result is that in the invented cigarette, like incigars and pipes, the nicotine and its related alkaloids enter the smokeless degraded by oxidation and pyrolysis than in conventionalcigarettes. Therefore the smoke of the invented cigarette, like thatfrom cigars and pipes, gives the feeling of being strong" and rich inkick" and, as we have experimentally ascertained, no longer incites thesmoker to inhale it.

Examples of materials suitable for employment as the inner sheet of ourwrapper are the glassiness, the tracing papers, as

well as all papers which are fabricated from vegetable fiber stocks andwere submitted to hydration and calendering until becoming essentiallyporeless and thus practically impervious to the passage of air.

The preferred embodiment of the invention is a cigarette as describedabove, in which the inner sheet is fabricated from vegetable fiberstocks which, like those used in the manufacture of conventionalcigarette paper, contain mostly flax pulp, the taste and odor of theproducts of its combustion being the least objectionable to smokers.

The functions of the two sheets of the composite wrapper of the inventedcigarette differ as follows. That of the practically impervious to airinner sheet, performed through its retard in burning, is to build thedescribed shield which assures that substantially all the air drawnthrough the cigarette during the puff is constrained to pass axiallythrough the burning coal. The outer sheet has multiple functions, One isto increase the selfburning capability in the intervals between puffs.Additions of nitrates, known to enhance paper combustibility, may beused in the porous sheet inasmuch as, contrary to what happens in aconventional cigarette, the gases produced by the nitrates decompositiondo not enter into the mainstream smoke of the invented cigarette,because of the described shield effect of the practically impervious toair inner sheet. A second function of the outer sheet, performed bothduring the puff and in the intervals between puffs, is to confer desiredqualities to the ash. The described two functions are assured throughour provision that the conventional cigarette paper used as the outerwrapper sheet be one of good combustibility and ashing qualities. Athird function performed by said outer sheet is to mask, through itsopacity, the brown stains of the condensate of nicotine and tars" of thesmoke, which otherwise would be visible because of translucency of mostimpervious to air vegetable wrappers as a result of the hydration of thefibers, an operation employed to achieve imperviousness to air,

We claim:

A cigarette comprising a charge of tobacco and a substantiallycylindrical composite wrapper therearound, the said wrapper beingcomposed of two superposed thin sheets, the outer sheet of saidcomposite wrapper consisting of conventional cigarette paper fabricatedof vegetable fiber stock being porous and of good combustibility andashing qualities, the inner sheet which is in contact with the tobaccobeing fabricated of uncoated, unsized and unimpregnated vegetable fiberstock and essentially so poreless as to be practically impervious to thepassage of air therethrough, the inner wrapper sheet burning at a rateslower than the tobacco underneath and the outer sheet and in such wisethat substantially all the air which is drawn through the cigaretteduring combustion is constrained to pass axially through the burningcoal.

